


The Mother We Share

by nicasio_silang



Category: The Americans (TV 2013)
Genre: Gen, tw: miscarriage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-28
Updated: 2013-02-28
Packaged: 2017-12-03 20:50:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/702511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nicasio_silang/pseuds/nicasio_silang
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When I was a girl nothing happened at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Mother We Share

When Elizabeth was a little girl she played make-believe: doll mommy, doll daddy, doll baby twins. Elizabeth was an only child, her younger brother born dead and her mother at his heels. When I was a little girl I had four brothers. Older. Dim faces turning away to join my father on the front. Aleksandr, 16 years old, tucking my hair behind my ear and closing my small hand around a pistol. 

When Elizabeth is pregnant with her first child, she’s nervous, comma, but thrilled. Her pregnant mother, a premonition, standing at the sink, the water streaming and streaming, going quieter as she got heavier and rounder, holding Elizabeth by the back of the neck a bit too roughly. She hadn’t thought of it for so long, but at the doctor she thinks to mention it, and the doctor says “ah,” like he’s been waiting to hear exactly that, then he writes something at the top of the chart. 

Phillip: But there isn’t... There’s not any...

The Doctor: No, no, nothing like that! I’m not worried at all, you shouldn’t be.

He directs this to Phillip.

When I was a girl-

When I was-

When I was a girl nothing happened at all.

Elizabeth’s mother was a legal secretary, and when Elizabeth was born she became a full-time homemaker. A decadent expense of time. But perhaps she was already ill, and hiding it? That must have been it. Elizabeth has fuzzy toddler memories of her mother’s long daytime naps, the sickening sound of her mother dry heaving, the strands of her mother’s hair that fell and fell from her scalp.

Phillip: It’s a girl.

Elizabeth: I didn’t want to know.

Phillip: Maybe she’ll look like you.

Me: Maybe she’ll think like me.

Phillip: Oh, well, God help us all.

When I was a little girl I had a mommy doll, daddy doll, and four older brothers. One by one, they marched away. My mother turned the faucet on, off, on, she cupped the back of my head hard, like she was holding me inside myself. Unwilling, instinctively, I repeat the gesture for the first time, my hand on the roundness of my stomach.


End file.
